The Zend 2023 PHP Landscape Report, a yearly analysis of the PHP environment conducted by Perforce Software, has revealed that over 61% of respondents within the PHP community are utilizing at least one out-of-support PHP version. With more than 100 employees, that percentage increased to around 66%.
“PHP moves fast, and our survey results again show that many teams either don’t have the resources necessary to consistently keep up, or don’t prioritize it,” said Zend Product Manager Matthew Weier O’Phinney. “This leaves them in a precarious position - one that exposes their applications to potentially dangerous vulnerabilities.”
Even though 68% of those surveyed said an update was planned for the following 12 months, more than half said they only devote 25% or less of their development time on maintenance jobs like migrations. Respondents agreed, citing the development of new features as being more crucial than application security.
“It’s clear from this survey data that some PHP teams are forced to make hard decisions when it comes to developing their applications – do they ensure their applications are secure and risk falling behind their competitors? Or do they focus on creating new features and ignore potential exposure to vulnerabilities,” added Matthew Weier O’Phinney. “Luckily there are options that can help companies do both - like commercial PHP LTS and migration services from Zend.”
Containerization, Orchestration
“PHP moves fast, and our survey results again show that many teams either don’t have the resources necessary to consistently keep up, or don’t prioritize it,” said Zend Product Manager Matthew Weier O’Phinney.
The paper also examined orchestration and containerization trends for PHP. More than 57% of those surveyed said they used containerization technology, and more than 47% said they were employing orchestration tools right away. The results of the poll also demonstrated a strong relationship between adoption and firm size, with larger businesses far more likely to be utilizing containerization and orchestration technologies.
“PHP teams continue to break the mold when it comes to containerization and orchestration adoption,” added Mr. O’Phinney. “While larger organizations in the software application industry are typically slow to adopt these trends, large PHP teams are early and eager adopters.”
As in past years, Zend utilized the survey to solicit donations for a nonprofit organization that supports technology. The 2023 poll generated funds for Code2040, a nonprofit organization that strives to remove systemic obstacles that prohibit Black and Latinx individuals from fully participating and taking leadership roles in the innovation economy.
Perforce’s technology helps solving the hardest DevOps challenges. Perforce is privately held, backed by Clearlake Capital and Francisco Partners, and operates in more than 80 nations, with more than 75 percent of the Fortune 100 as clients. Zend by Perforce enables businesses to leverage corporate PHP to create cutting-edge online and mobile solutions and update legacy systems.
